Tri2Cook

I'm at work when it airs so I usually end up downloading it and watching it on saturday mornings. I have to avoid this discussion until I do so I'm always a few days behind. I'm not overly enjoying this season so far. There's nobody doing anything that keeps me wondering what they're going to do next week. Very little push and intelligent risk taking. Everybody seems to have the gameplan to skate as far as they can and hope to survive to the end. I hope someone is going to show some fire at some point. I also hope it hasn't got to the point that we're going to get the stove top stuffing and chicken of the sea tuna finale.

Hey! I rarely do buffet. Only when that's what the client requests. Of course I also rarely do the tasting menu. Most of my jobs wind up being app, main, dessert with the occasional amuse and/or pre-dessert and/or petit fours thrown in. Yes, I saw the "raz" icon. No offense taken. Rob, I rarely use the "new cuisine" techniques that I practice, learn, experiment with for catering. As already mentioned, if they're not adventurous and don't "get it" then they will look down their noses at it. That being said, you gotta do your thing. If they want you, they gotta want what you do to some extent.

I've done a beer ganache with raspberry lambic. I did it somewhat similar to the recipe Kerry posted but didn't add spices, didn't use sorbitol (I used trimoline), used 70% dark chocolate and didn't use butter (I used some additional cocoa butter). I'd have to find my notes to remember the exact ratios. I was trying to keep the sweetness level moderate and mask the base flavors as little as possible. I should add the disclaimer that it was not for chocolates, I rarely do those, it was a component for a dessert. I was happy with the result but, again, it wasn't going in a chocolate shell and didn't need shelf life.

I think the solution was already mentioned. I think maybe the paper is the culprit. When I do wraps I use acetate or other thin, flexy plastic and I've never had a buckling problem. For spreading chocolate thin on plastic, I usually let it set just until it begins to firm up then top it with another sheet and flip it. It seems to do the trick for me but maybe I've just been lucky. Looking forward to seeing what you created.

I've made it several times. I like it a lot. I also like Heston Blumenthal's version but it's much more work and not particularly better than Pierre Herme's, just different. The exact recipe for Pierre Herme's version is in his Chocolate Desserts book. It's chocolate cake, kirsch syrup, kirsch cream, chocolate cream, port cherries and whipped cream if that helps.

Wellll... I guess we can let you do that. Yep, you can. And if you poach enough to get a nice shrimp flavored butter you can chill it and make shrimp biscuits or shrimp brioche or something.

That's funny, that's almost exactly what I thought it was going to be too. I didn't think of the sous vide part but I thought the numbers were going to represent food temps. Would have been more interesting than "find the page number in the top chef book and turn it into a soup".

Well, of course there's cookies and milk. I like dark chocolate dougnuts (plain, no glaze or icing) with earl grey tea.

I'm thinking those little twists are more about being a master of dealing with the situation at hand and getting the job done. A top chef would say "ok, this is what I have to work with so this is how I'll get it done". A flop chef would say "I can't" and start making excuses. I'm sure the boxed stocks are the result of advertising dollars as well.

I didn't find that interesting at all. He went into it with a Gordon Ramsay grudge, of course he was going to complain and be annoyed all the way through it. In the end, he admitted it was good to eat. How much work you have to do or how much cleanup you have to do after has nothing to do with whether or not a recipe is good. I don't share his sentiments on techniques either. There are enough books out there already with detailed explanations that spend 5 pages telling us how to sift flour. That annoys me. I'm not even convinced on the whole idea behind the experiments. Who claimed every cookbook exists for the purpose of being easy to use? I buy books like the Alinea book or Gordon Ramsays book or the Fat Duck book because I want to know how they do it. Just because I can't easily pull off a recipe in the book or some of the processes are inconvenient doesn't mean it's a crap book.

Melted sugar is very hot... and that's all I got to say about that.

I don't know if they're "perfect" but these biscuits rock. I've done them as written and also tested a bacon version I'm going to use in a course for an upcoming dinner.

Prawncrackers tea smoked duck breast rocks. I don't think it's posted though, you'll probably have to ask for it if you want to check it out. Well worth the asking.

So I've hit a bit of a snag. I had a plan worked out. I talked to my partner in the catering business (who always tells everybody "he's the cook, I just help out") about what I was going to do and she's not into it. She says a stew is too simple, not fancy enough. She's wrong of course, given the context and budget involved and the fact that anything can be as "fancy" as you want it to be, but I have a really busy schedule this weekend prepping for a large multi course dinner I have coming up in a couple days and don't have time to fight about it so I did the adult thing and said "fine, figure it out for yourself then". So I'm not really sure what we're doing right now. We're really not this unprofessional normally, I usually do the menu and the majority of the prep and cooking and she handles the bookings and paperwork but for some reason she decided to pick this really inconvenient time to assert her opinion on the menu. Oh well, as long as the customer is happy in the end, it really doesn't matter I guess.

Wontons in sweet applications are fun. I was first inspired by the apricot-chanterelle wontons with sweet tomago roll and the fried chocolate filled wontons with mango and mint in Wild Sweets and have since done a number of things using wonton skins. Definitely not an idea that should stay in your head.

All in all, I completely agree with the judges on the second episode elimination challenge. Weak. Although the pressure of the moment probably does have it's influence, it's really not a valid excuse with a day to plan, shop and prep, a night to think it through and the Craft kitchen to work in. Would "it was a really busy night and there were some high profile guests in that night" be an excuse for sending subpar food in their own restaurants?

My mom usually just sliced it and pan fried it. Even as a kid, I didn't like it. And I had the "this is what we're having and this is what you will eat" parents, not the "oh, well let me run right in there and cook you something else" parents. Fortunately, enough mustard can make anything edible.

For me personally, I find peeling apples, pears, potatoes, etc. much easier with a knife than with a peeler. Maybe it's just a matter of what a person is used to.

I do not like spam in a box. I do not like spam with a fox. I will not eat spam in a house. I do not like spam with a mouse. I do not like spam here or there. I do not like spam anywhere. I'm not the anti-spam, I just really don't like it. And I was faced with enough of it growing up to know for sure that it's not just in my head. Then there's that bit of spam jello surrounding the little spam critter ...

I don't have a "must do" recipe. I just take apples, apple juice, sugar (I've used white, brown and maple sugars in various renditions) and spices, slowly cook 'til brown and velvety and call it good enough. Apple butter on hot biscuits with brown butter (or just plain butter for that matter)... where's the *drool* smilie?

Some really good ideas, thanks everybody. The problem isn't that I can't make a salad, it's that I wasn't leaning towards doing salad. I was leaning towards a soup starter until I thought about doing the stew. What I may do is a roast and veggies based on a beef and ale stew instead and go with the soup anyway but I thought I'd fish for some salad ideas first. Normally when I get a dinner with salad the customer tells me what kind of salad they want but I'm not so sure these guys want salad at all, it's coordinated by the entertainment series. Plus the weather isn't very salad-y here right now (-15c and snow) unless I go with a warm salad.

I have to do another dinner for the local entertainment series this sunday. Last time it was a light summery meal for ladies. This time it's a cold weather meal for 4 men who are self-described as "Scottish meat and potatoes guys". The person in charge with the entertainment series said "salad, main, dessert". I was thinking soup, main, dessert would be better (and have the freedom to make that kind of decision with this client) but have also considered a lamb or beef and ale stew with brown bread for the main. A soup to start a stew seems kinda not right to me but I'm not sure what kind of salad I'd do for not-salad-guys. I'm not really a salad guy myself as a rule so I can't even do the "what would I want" thing. Any ideas?

Pulled pork doesn't have to be butt or shoulder. I lined the bottom of a hotel pan with onion, garlic and fresh herbs, added a little liquid (very little) and filled the pan with pork hocks. I sealed the pan tight and let them go in a 170f oven for about 12 hours then pulled them. Flavorful and very tender. It was a test run for an app I'm doing for a dinner I'm catering next week.

I posted once about trying to work out their recipe here and Alex joined in and posted it himself (that was really cool of him). It involved a few other things.

I did Chef Mason's consomme with gelatin filtration as well. It worked out better that way for me then when I did it with the raft. I used it by topping some vanilla bean noodles with a piece of halibut and pouring the consomme around it. I also used it in combination with walleye and grapefruit for an amuse course. I haven't used it for anything sweet yet (but I have use Alex and Aki's white chocolate consomme on the sweet side with great results).